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Harry Reid: Hurricane Katrina was nothing compared to Sandy

WASHINGTON – Comparing disasters is probably never a good idea because regardless of the size it’s a travesty for those directly affected. Therefore, it was surprising, as well as factually incorrect, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Friday took to the Senate floor and declared that Hurricane Katrina was “nothing in comparison to what happened to the people in New York and New Jersey” from Hurricane Sandy.

Sandy devastated some of the nation’s most populated areas, but it didn’t come close to Katrina. Hurricane Katrina, and the flooding that followed when federally built levees failed, killing 1,833 and causing more than $145 billion in damage. Sandy has been blamed for 120 deaths and over $80 billion in damage.

Comments

Reid is an ass, having gone through Katrina and Ivan, as bad as Sandy was it did not compare to those two storms. Yes, a lot of people were displaced by Sandy and a lot of damage but do a little research into Katrina and Ivan, talk about getting smacked. I feel for you East Coast but you didn’t get hammered like we did.

Therefore, it was surprising, as well as factually incorrect, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Friday took to the Senate floor and declared that Hurricane Katrina was “nothing in comparison to what happened to the people in New York and New Jersey” from Hurricane Sandy.

No, what is surprising is that in our current pathetic political system no one from the other party can rise up on the senate floor and not call him out as a chickenshit, or at the very least ask him to back up his assertions.

Whether it’s a tornado, a hurricane, a flood, a mudslide, blizzard, forest fire, whatever… if it hits your house, family or business it is a big deal. Some areas are more prepared for certain storms etc. but if some mega-tornado which can vacuum out basements as it tears through four or five states like the 2011 one did in the southeast the score is L for anyone in its path.

No one with a brain would think Sandy (not a true Cat 1) would compare to Katrina (a Cat 5 that made landfall as a Cat 3). I live in NJ and have seen the damage of Sandy, but people just had to deal with property damage, not massive loss of life. I’d say Reid’s a moron, but that’s self-evident every time he speaks.

It’s also about the pork in the Sandy relief bill and the color of the states on the electoral map. Sandy has to be ‘worse’ to justify the huge amount of spending — must of it not even related to the storm damage — that was crammed into the bill, and while New Orleans itself may be solidly Democrat, the rest of Louisiana and the surrounding states aren’t, and aren’t going to be for a while.

The expiration date on the Dems’ faux Katrina compassion has arrived, so the Senate Majority Leader can use the latest storm de jour to demand more federal spending and come across as Mr. Compassionate to this round of hurricane victims.

Reid is an ass, having gone through Katrina and Ivan, as bad as Sandy was it did not compare to those two storms. Yes, a lot of people were displaced by Sandy and a lot of damage but do a little research into Katrina and Ivan, talk about getting smacked. I feel for you East Coast but you didn’t get hammered like we did.

major dad on January 6, 2013 at 11:37 PM

Sandy and Katrina did far more damage than Ivan, and the only reason that is so is because we here in Florida aren’t complete idiots when it comes to hurricanes. Ivan was brutal and massive and caused a large amount of damage, which nobody seemed to care about because it wasn’t a racist storm. FEMA’s “response” to the hurricane was nonexistent, as well, which prevents me from giving even an infinitesimal fraction of a damn about how the honey didn’t flow quickly enough in NOLA and New York.

After Cox cable employees fixed the power lines themselves with some help from displaced power company workers, they were heroes. When FEMA came by in their vans with their “Your benevolent masters are here to lift you out of storm-induced poverty” schtick, two months AFTER power had been restored and all the trees removed from the roads, people in the neighborhood stood outside their homes and jeered at the vans when they came by. I’m not saying eggs were thrown….but eggs were thrown.

Wasn’t the idea that I was forced against my will to bailout New Orleans because it was federally built levees that broke? How is it the property on the high rent east coast wasn’t insured and somehow it’s my duty to bail them out, as well?

Really, Harry? I live in H-Town(Houston for the layperson) and I recall our city taking in quite a few refugees…errrr, evacuees from New Orleans after Katrina hit. Maybe it’s just being underreported to protect Dear Leader’s rep, but I haven’t heard nearly as many stories about tens(if not hundreds) of thousands of people in the aftermath of Sandy who’ve been rendered homeless and forced to seek shelter in a completely different state.

Katrina was a Category 5 storm, and huge. Saying it came on shore as a Cat 3 storm is extremely misleading, because by the time the eye of the storm came ashore, half of Katrina had been on shore for hours (Katrina was not only a huge storm, but very slow moving.) So it’s hardly surprising that the storm had slowed down by that time, but the Cat 5 winds had already done their damage.

But it wasn’t just Katrina that year. Hurricane Rita came along after that, and devastated major parts of Lousiana and east Texas after that.

Sandy was a huge storm, but not an especially fierce one. It never rose above Category 1, for example.

Still, this is why you shouldn’t compare disasters. Sandy hit heavily populated areas that were not prepared for this kind of storm. While I don’t like to see Katrina dismissed as if it were no big deal, Sandy was bad enough.